I find some strange nostalgia trips comforting. 1950s science fiction movies, for example. The kind I grew up watching on the Saturday afternoon movie. THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US or THE DEADLY MANTIS. I can turn on almost any of those movies – and there are now hundreds of them on YouTube – and be instantly comforted by the thought of a world in which such cheesy entertainments were thrilling and even scary.
Similarly I’ve always loved old doctor shows. You can keep GREY’S ANATOMY and other modern examples of the genre. Give me BEN CASEY and DR. KILDARE. Or rarer birds: THE NURSES or MEDIC. I like the fact that not only the production values but also the medical technology is horribly outdated. You’d think this would be frightening, but I find it soothing to imagine waking up in one of those black-and-white hospitals hooked up to hopelessly outdated machines and watching the doctors and nurses urgently flit about spouting passé theories of causation.
I spent a year in and out of a hospital of that vintage (or a little more recent really, 1974) as a teenager, so maybe that’s part of it. The experience seems to have rendered that world permanently comfortable to me. Most people are at least a bit freaked out by visits to the hospital. I’m weirdly fascinated and at home there. Not to the point of seeking out the experience, I’m happy to report. Since that time in adolescence, my life has been remarkably devoid of medical drama. But I do love the old shows.
We were a Ben Casey household when I was a kid. Vince Edwards (who played glowering Dr. Casey) and Richard Chamberlain (whose Dr. Kildare was practically Little Mary Sunshine by comparison) were TV rivals (in the same way Robert Young as Marcus Welby and Chad Everett as Dr. Joe Gannon on MEDICAL CENTER would later be) – different networks, different styles, different loyal fan base. My mom thought Dr. Kildare was too pretty. But she swooned for Dr. Casey, as I would in later years.
But episodes of BEN CASEY are hard to come by. Only one season is available on DVD, whereas, owing possibly to Chamberlain’s larger reputation as an actor and a star, the entire run of DR. KILDARE can be seen that way. So I began watching the show we were all but forbidden to mention growing up. It’s definitely not as dark and rough-hewn as the world of Casey’s city hospital, and becomes much more of a soap opera as the seasons progress, appealing to the lead actor’s teen fan base with a lot of Kildare love interests (Casey was notoriously hard to get out even on a date), but it became clear as I began bingeing the episodes that Chamberlain is the far superior actor. He really grows into the role, and he said in his autobiography that working with Raymond Massey (as the required older doctor in these shows – MARCUS WELBY M.D. flipped the script by making the old guy the lead, but otherwise they’re all the same plot basically, which was also mimicked in a high school setting by Chamberlain wannabe James Franciscus as MR. NOVAK) and the many illustrious guest stars on the hit series was his education in acting. I ended up watching every single episode of the show (about 150) and even creating a character in my play A TERMINAL EVENT who’s obsessed with it.
I knew Richard Chamberlain lived in my West Hollywood neighborhood. My partner John had spotted him a time or two at the gym. But I’m notoriously bad at star-sighting and never saw him. When I did finally see him, in the restaurant Tender Greens, it was before I’d started my binge watch and, a firm Vince Edwards partisan under my mother’s influence, I thought, “Meh,” and much to the shock of many of my female friends did not go up and speak to the former teen idol. (John suggested I pretend to be choking and he would cry, “Is there a doctor in the house?”) And then when I’d become a fan, even though Chamberlain was known to be a regular at that place, he just never, ever showed up when John and I were there.
And now he’s died, yesterday, it seems, at ninety, so I missed my chance. Nothing you say to these people can ever really convey what they mean to you anyway, can it? They say it’s one of the weirder aspects of such fame: You are part of the fabric of other people’s lives, the weave of their deepest memories, whether you like it or not. And you must deal with that every time you’re out in public. Well, up to a point. The kids who worked at Tender Greens had no idea who that nice older man was. I left a note for him about my play when it was running in town, telling him he was featured in it, and they said they’d give it to him but seemed to have no clear idea really who I was talking about. I could have mentioned THE THORN BIRDS or the original SHOGUN, but that wouldn’t have meant anything to these youngsters either. “He’s Dr. Kildare! How can you not know that?” I wanted to shout. But it would have done no good. They would have just gone back to their phones, re-absorbed in the tech and the fantasies that it will one day, decades from now, comfort them to remember in the middle of the night.